Door 808 – 8 Months Later

May 26, 2026

In September 2025, I released Door 808, a book I had been writing since 2013. As I’ve always said to those close to me, if even one person purchased the book, I’d be happy. Thankfully, the reception for the book was far greater than I had ever hoped.

Now don’t get me wrong, I have not made any money from publishing Door 808 and I likely never will. The truth is, publishing is expensive especially when you factor in the book cover and marketing costs. Like with most things, if you aren’t lucky with the algorithm or pour thousands into marketing, you will likely see very few sales, if any at all. This isn’t news, it’s how the world works now on big platforms like Amazon, YouTube, Facebook etc.#

To my delight, in its first week it broke the top 100 books for its category!

Thankfully, and truthfully, I never cared about making any money from the book. I simply wanted to tell the story that had been nagging me for over a decade in the back of my brain. Seeing it on my shelf brings me great joy, because its a symbol of my persistence and belief in myself that I can anything if I pushed myself hard enough.

Anyway, enough bullshit. Let’s talk about some cool stuff that happened over the last 8 months. I set myself some goals that I wanted to achieve, and I can safely say now as of this week that I’ve accomplished all of them. An unforeseen goal came up as well, which I’ll also talk about.

Train Journeys

Door 808 actually began as a concept on the long journeys home from work, where I had a lot of time to think and write down ideas. I felt it was fitting to give away some free copies at my local train station. To my delight, both copies were taken pretty quickly and are hopefully being circulated around still today.

Waterstones

Getting my book into Waterstones seemed like such a long shot. I didn’t want to set such an impossible goal for myself, but truth be told I really loved the idea of seeing my book in Waterstones either physically or on their website. Well, it turns out it’s really not too difficult to get into Waterstones, or I was just very lucky. I applied, got accepted and here it is in all its glory. Awesome 🙂.

The Curiosity Bookshop

In a previous blog, I spoke about my cringy modelling career when I was a young lad. I got the privilege to be on the front cover of someone else’s book, A Handful of Magic by Stephen Elboz.

After I did the photoshoot, I never heard anything about the book or its publication. I think it was a year later where we finally tracked it down, and of all places, it was in my local bookshop, The Curiosity Bookshop. Seeing myself on the front cover was SO cool when I was younger, it felt like a massive deal.

So, how does this relate to my own book? Well, I knew when I finished Door 808 I absolutely wanted to either get it stocked or at the very least advertised by them. As of this week, they not only advertised it, but they also sold a copy for me. I’ll always greatly appreciate them for doing that, as they could’ve easily said no to a self publisher.

Prison

To my surprise one morning, I received an email from a librarian at a prison in the North East of England. They told me that they discovered my book on Waterstones, and were going to purchase 12 copies. I was shocked, especially as they found my on Waterstones and their infinite library. Not only did they want to use my book as part of their book club, but they also requested that I come and talk to them about my publishing journey. They were impressed with the little blurb I wrote about the struggles to get to this point. I was delighted, but, after the birth of my son, I couldn’t really justify being away for a day, especially while he was that young. They are still very much open to me doing it again with them in the future, and honestly, it sounds super exciting and would give me a massive confidence boost. Maybe someday!

Overall, I’m thrilled with how well the book has done. I am very determined to make the sequel, I have a ton of ideas that will make people understand the characters of Door 808 more. It just might take a little while, while the little one takes priority.